


Tomorrow Man

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Partner Betrayal, future!cas - Freeform, past!Dean - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-29
Updated: 2012-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:11:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The part of the conversation that didn’t take place in 5.04 ‘The End’ between past Dean and future Cas. Dean became a monster Castiel became just another piece of collateral because really, there are no happy endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow Man

**Author's Note:**

> QUOTE: “Does it matter now? It was just another conquest in the colorful history of Dean Winchester. So the drinking, the drugs, the women- why take that away from me? You took everything else. Still, here I am following you on your suicide mission because that’s just what I do.”

**Tomorrow Man.**

2014

  
         It had been a quiet drive, at least for a stretch. There were so many things subtly wrong with the future it wasn’t worth counting them all. First on the list was Castiel making the transition from socially backwards angel to end-of-days hippie, marinated in the smell of sex and pot-smoke. He wore sin like a smoking jacket, velvet-casual and tailor made. Dean was lost in thought when the rattling of a pill bottle snapped him back to attention; Cas kept a prescription stash on the dashboard.  
         Dean watched as he popped the top, swallowed a few pills and kept on driving.  
         “Let me see those.”  
         “You want some?” Cas asked.  
         Dean stared incredulously at the bottle, “Amphetamines?”  
         “It’s the perfect antidote to that absinthe.”  
         “Mmm.” Dean cleared his throat, “Don’t get me wrong Cas, ah- I’m happy that the stick is out of your ass, but… What’s going on with the drugs and the orgies and the love-guru crap?”  
         Cas threw his head back and laughed, which made Dean a little uncomfortable.  
         “What’s so funny?”  
         “Dean, I’m not an angel anymore.”  
         “What?”  
         “Yeah, I went mortal.”  
         “What do you mean, how?”  
         “I think it had something to do with the other angels leaving, but when they bailed my mojo just kind of…” Cas took his hand off the wheel to make a petering motion, “Shhhr- drained away. And now, you know, I’m practically human. I mean, Dean I’m all but useless. Last year, broke my foot- laid up for two months.”  
         “Wow.”  
         “Yeah.”  
         “So you’re human.” Cas nodded.  
         “Well, welcome to the club.”  
         “Thanks.” Cas paused then added, “Except I used to belong to a much better club and now I’m powerless. I’m hapless, I’m hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in woman and decadence right? It’s the end, baby. That’s what decadence is for. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out? But then, that’s just how I roll.” Cas’ laugh was hollow and Dean looked away.  
         “I just thought you would ah, stay a little more…”  _Angelic_?  
         “Yeah, well. I figured I didn’t catch the last train home so might as well jump into it feet first.”  
         “Wait, what?”  
         “The angels- before they left it was a sort of last boarding call, coming or going. Not just angels in vessels, fallen angels even. Everybody jump ship we’re leaving for another rock, an all-sins-forgiven free pass back into the fold.”  
         “What the hell, and you  _stayed_?”  
         Cas nodded, “I probably shouldn’t be having this conversation with you, but since I don’t run the show anymore, who cares about linear time?” Cas squinted at the road, a maniacal grin spreading across his face as he nodded at the pill bottle. “Wow, good buzz. You should have had a couple. Anyway, you really want to know why I stayed?”  
         Dean nodded.  
         “For you.”  
         “What, was it that bad with Sam, the Croats? I couldn’t handle it?”  
         “Ahhh, past you- well,  _current_ from where you’re sitting-“ Cas sighed, “It’s refreshing. No, you could have handled it on your own.”  
         “Then why?”  
         “It’s funny that you’d have to ask, but I guess the old me was such a backwards little tree-topper it would have been hard to guess. That’s one of your favorite sayings, or was- will be. Something like that. You know how the first year went, after you said no? It was great, well relatively speaking. There was still death, still violence but nothing compared to what was coming. My angel powers went caput a few months in but you covered all the basics: eating, sleeping, hell- I learned to drive in your car.”  
         “I let you drive the  _Impala_? And what, did I teach you to throw wild sex parties between red means stop and green means go?”  
         “Oh, you tried. I’m sure I’ve been introduced to every pair of breasts in at least fifty states. It wasn’t really my bag back then but…” Cas shrugged, “Gotta go with the flow though, change with the times.”  
         “Well you sure as shit seem to be making up for lost time.” Dean snarked.  
         Cas shrugged, “I waited long enough.”  
         “The virgin thing, eh?” Dean chuckled.  
         “You could say that, yeah.” Cas swung his head to the side casually, “You know where I was the night we-  _you_ \- found out about Sam?”  
         “Uh… Sure?”  
         The memory was as raw as the day it happened.  
         “In your bed.”

2012.

  
         The orangey-yellow glow of Dean’s oil lamp cast eerie shadows across the cabin, but it felt warm. Castiel was perched on the edge of a lumpy futon with a two-sizes-too-big shirt and sliding off his left shoulder. Dean was staring resolutely at the wall and the silence of mutual understanding stretched between them like an invisible tether.  
         “We might be able to get him back, Dean.” Castiel ventured.  
         “I don’t fucking care if we do. Don’t you get it? He said  _yes_ \- He’s not my brother and he hasn’t been for a while.”  
         “Maybe he thought he was…”  
         “Doing the right thing? That he could control the  _devil_? That he could make it right? Fuck, Cas don’t be so goddamn stupid. This giving people the benefit of the doubt bullshit of yours is wearing thin.”  
         “You taught me to do it.” Castiel said reproachfully.  
         “Well, forget it. I was wrong.”  
         Castiel pursed his lips, but said nothing. Instead he reached out a comforting hand, unconsciously resting it atop the scar he had left years before. It was something he rarely did, more for his own benefit than for Dean’s. It was a simple gesture, meant to be reassuring. In the end, there was nothing he could say that would bring Sam back or fix things, but he wanted to be supportive.  
         Dean turned his head, “You really would do anything for me, wouldn’t you?”  
         “Without question.”  
         Dean snorted in the back of his throat but leant forward with flagrant disregard for his own rules on personal space. Castiel didn’t move, but stared levelly back at Dean. It was the momentary hitch in his breath that gave him away, the tremble in his hands barely perceptible on Dean’s shoulder. Frozen in a passing tableau the emotionless blank of Dean’s eyes seemed to soften, but that was wishful thinking.  
         When their mouths met the kiss was raw, unpractised and purely physical. The bitter aftertaste of unbrushed teeth and cheap whisky frothed on Dean’s tongue, wrapping around Castiel’s own Colgate-fresh. The noise that Castiel made was both a surprised squeak and a satisfied groan as his eyes widened, then closed. He found himself tumbling into feelings he had never experienced as Dean’s teeth and tongue worried his bottom lip. If something had been missing from the puzzle of his self-perception he’d found it in aces and in spades.  
         Sandpapery stubble on stubble left a rubbed-raw feeling which Castiel didn’t notice and Dean ignored. Dean was used to peachy-soft women but before he could get too caught up in analysing what he was doing he decided he didn’t care. He tangled his fingers in Castiel’s hair, wrenching his neck backwards and exposing the too-skinny protrusion of his collar bone. One warm and willing body was no different than another and Dean found himself thumbing Castiel’s Adam’s apple in spite.  
         “ _Dean_.”  
         Castiel was experiencing a metamorphosis of emotive reaction; it radiated from his chest, slid down his belly and pooled at the head of his cock. Dean tugged off his own shirt and then twisted Castiel’s sideways, ripping the frayed stitching. The cottony fabric draped low, exposing the cream-white skin of his side and the pebble-pink of his nipple. The imagery was somehow more erotic, as if barely clad he was infinitely more naked than nudity would permit. As Dean rolled his thumb and forefinger around Castiel’s nipple, he gasped.  
         “You like that.” It was a statement, not a question.  
         Dean dragged Castiel into his lap like a ragdoll, surprised when lean legs wrapped around his waist without instruction. The loose grey of Castiel’s track pants was eagerly tented, but Dean ignored it in favour of his baby-soft throat. As Dean sucked a purpling signature into the salty skin Castiel leaned into the embrace, unconsciously rocking his hips in the pursuit of friction because it was a new but delicious sensation.  
         Castiel wasn’t entirely sure where to put his hands. He found himself desperately parroting what Dean had done, touching, pinching and scraping like a mirror-twin. He drew a shaky breath as Dean ground his pelvis against his, tossing his head back because it seemed like the right thing to do. Enamored with the thrill of skin on skin, Castiel didn’t know how to beg so he prayed.  
         Untangling their arms Dean stood up, popped the button on his jeans and let them puddle at his feet. He undid the loose drawstring of Castiel’s jogging pants, sliding them over paper-pale hips. He had found an almost-empty tub of Vaseline and let the lid clatter to the floor. Dean was no stranger to the fundamentals; he had had his share of wild woman and he knew the routine.  
         “Turn over.”  
         Castiel balked at the implication, shades of past purism battling the more insistent voice of sexual curiosity. Dean flicked a thumb over his weeping cock, pre-come smeared and glistening on the head. Reservation and doubt paling in the shadow of want Castiel found himself on his hands and knees, the backs of his thighs quivering in anticipatory anxiety. He was disheveled, glistening with a fine patina of sweat and so suddenly and intimately human it was obscene.  
         Dean spread him wide, swirling cold-lotion circles along the ridges of his too-tight hole. Thick and gelatinous globs of Vaseline melted in greasy rivulets until Castiel felt slicked and wet all over. Dean slid in a first finger, by the second there was an ache inside Castiel couldn’t name. Dean fucked him loose with calculated strokes but the third finger stretched him too fast and it burnt. It was a sudden sharp sensation that dissolved into a throbbing ache, from agonizing to painful but perfect in seconds.  
         Cock untouched and hanging heavy between his legs Castiel could feel the larger, blunter pressure of Dean sliding into his body. It was impossibly tight and he fought it before relaxing into the unusual stretch of fullness. Dean snapped his hips in sharp piston-thrusts with no regard for the tender newness of the experience. There was no misrepresented sanctity, just animalistic rutting for the sake of friction. The wet slap of skin on skin beat out a drumbeat and Castiel’s forearms trembled with the effort of keeping himself upright.  
         Dean’s rhythm stuttered as he reached around to stroke Castiel. He fisted the over-sensitized flesh once, twice and then a third time. As he stroked Dean's thrusts angled downwards and Castiel came into his hand in ropey spurts. Rocking the swelling tensity Dean grabbed Castiel's hips, smearing wetness up his back. When he finally came it was with a grunt and he slid out, leaving a soggy trail of lube and spunk.  
         In the afterglow Dean didn't pull away from a last tender kiss and Castiel leant his sweat-soaked brow against Dean’s chest. There was a tiny smile on his face, his blue eyes soft and his expression serene. It was as if his world had become suddenly clearer, black and white to vivid color. It was Castiel’s happy sigh that interrupted the reverie because Dean didn’t want to hear a shy and embarrassed ‘ _I love you_ ’ because really, he didn’t care.  
         Without a second glance he pulled on his jeans and left, the cabin door slamming behind him.

2014.

         Dean visibly paled.  
         “Wait, are you saying… Whoah man, back up the crazy train, I don’t play that way.”  
         “No you don’t, do you?” Cas paused, “But, you did. You must have slept with the entire camp afterwards, all the women anyway. Not that that was much different than your usual routine, but I never really understood. So when I got the page from upstairs I told them in shades of your colloquial turn-phrase to go pound salt and then they left.”  
         Dean opened his mouth, but Cas cut him off.  
         “You weren’t drunk, well- no more than usual. Not that it really matters,” Cas turned back to the road, “The mistake I made was thinking that it meant anything, I suppose it was some of that good ol’ angelic faith left in me, genuine angel-brand naivety.”  
         “So what, when we… you…” Dean struggled to string together a sentence without actually acknowledging was being implicitly implied.  
         “Does it matter now? It was just another conquest in the colorful history of Dean Winchester. So the drinking, the drugs, the women- why take that away from me? You took everything else. Still, here I am following you on your suicide mission because that’s just what I do.”  
         “I don’t get why we’d, I mean- listen man, you and future-me, why- well, I mean-“  
         “Don’t dance around the subject. You’re as subtle as a barn door.”  
         Dean shook the pill bottle he was still holding, “All this because I didn’t call you afterwards?”  
         “No, because you destroyed me.” Cas fixed him with a level stare.  
         Dean swallowed.  
         “So do me a favor when Zachariah zaps you back, send me packing. I don’t care how you do it, tell me whatever you want but get me back to where I belong.”  
         “You can’t be serious.”  
         “That’s always been your problem Dean, you think you know better. You come in guns blazing full of good intentions and now I’m riding out the aftermath.”  
         “Fuck, Cas.” He really was broken.  
         “When you get back,” Cas ignored him, “Send me home.”  
         “Listen-“  
         “If there’s one thing I should have learned from you a long time ago it’s that there are no happy endings. Maybe I thought I was due for some karmic exception,” Cas shrugged, “Call it a sin of pride.”  
         Dean paused, shaking his head. “How could I let you-?”  
         “-Get this bad?” Cas snorted, “Because you don’t care. It’s not just me, of course. You use everyone sooner or later. Oh, always for the greater good; one for guns, another for canned goods. It doesn’t matter who or what they do but on this particular mountain, you’re the king.”  
         “What, and no one’s ever tried to knock me down a peg?”  
         “Oh, of course and then,” Cas cocked his fingers like a gun. “ _Bang_ \- You shot them right between the eyes. It was never a democracy, Dean.”  
         Dean lapsed into silence, his mind overstuffed and reeling. Apparently he shot first, asked questions later, tortured, stole, fucked with impunity and didn’t seem to care. As for Castiel, whatever he had done or why was so completely out of his character that he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Either he’d tossed a lifetime of heterosexuality out the window because it meant something, or he’d just used whoever was handy because he could. Somehow between his past and future, people had become commodities and he had become a monster. Sam was the devil, Castiel was a drug-addict and Dean commanded a log-cabin army because he liked the prestige of it, the power.  
         Everything was entirely his fault.  
         “I’m sorry, Cas. For this-“ Dean gestured around, “For whatever I did to you.”  
         Cas snorted again.  
         “I’ll find a way. Stop it before it starts.”  
         “Dean,” Cas said levelly, “Stop playing hero. It’s why we’re all here in the first place.”

2009.

  
         Zachariah disappeared and Dean turned around to find Castiel. He was wearing his old trench-coat, clean but atypically unkempt. Castiel, not Cas. He wasn’t broken or jaded; he was awkward but well-meaning, full of misguided ideas on mortality and most importantly, he was familiar.  
         “That’s pretty nice timing, Cas.” Dean managed.  
         “We had an appointment.”  
         For a second the sting of what could be overshadowed Dean’s relief at being home. The echo of Cas’ conversation hovered in the forefront of his mind, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t send Castiel back to heaven because of mistakes he hadn’t made yet, mistakes he didn’t have to make at all. There would never be a moment of cruel indiscretion between them, Dean would never be that man. He could change it all, make it better. Castiel, Sam- everything.  
         Dean rested his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, struggling for the right words.  
         “Don’t ever change.”  
         Subtle smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Castiel nodded.  
         “How did Zachariah find you?”  
         “Long story. Let’s just stay away from Jehovah’s Witnesses from now on, okay?”  
         Dean pulled out his phone, hitting the speed-dial for Sam.  
         “What are you doing?”  
         “Something I should have done in the first place.”  
         Yes, he was going to fix it all.


End file.
